Mr. Know-it-all

Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the French I took

– Wonderful World, Sam Cooke

Yes, I do know that I love her – and since it looks like a wonderful world to me, she must love me, too – but still, I can’t get over the fact that I really don’t seem to know anything.

Well, I have no problem with that, it’s been a slow but steady process since the day I laughed when our high school biology teacher told everybody in the class that we’d be at our smartest when we graduate.

I really don’t even understand how a guy with a university degree can know so little about so much. What baffles me the most, though, is that I seem to pretend to know so much about, well, everything.

Every day, I spit out these half-truths, lies, and random sentences which I, upon reflection, don’t even know which ones they are.

I’ve probably always been doing this because a few months into our relationship, Wife was at my place and she burned her hand on a pan or something. I rushed to help her, with a box of butter in my hand.

“You gotta put this butter on the burn, it’ll help.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know!”

The next day at the office, she got better advice from a colleague who said that the worst thing you can do is to put butter on a burn wound. Apparently, it’s like deep frying it.

I keep catching myself talking without really knowing what I’m saying more often with the kids, though.

Daughter wanted to go to the back yard and eat raspberries. As she was racing down the stairs, I told her that there probably wouldn’t be any. “Because it’s not the season.”

I have no idea when raspberries are in season.

The other day, I was making waffles. A little bit of milk, and a little bit of flour, and a couple of eggs, a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, and then I put the dough into the fridge. Because apparently, that’s what you do because … don’t know why.

Today, I explained the mechanics of a ski lift – sitting in one – to Son, and while watching him stack up stones on the side of the beautiful Norwegian mountain, I think I may have mentioned Stonehenge, and how it was built.

Last week, on our way back from the playground around the corner, Son wanted me to explain to Daughter why the trees were important to the ecological balance. So I pushed my glasses further up on my nose, coughed a couple of times, and launched into a ten-minute lecture of oxygen, and breathing, and carbon dioxide, and how it’s not easy being green, and how the sunlight makes the plants grow.

My biology teacher would have been shocked, but possibly also pleased about how right she had once been – at least with this particular specimen of human life.

Is it better to have known stuff and lost it than never to have known it at all, like the famous poet, William Shakespeare once said. By the way, he lived in England in the 16th century, at the same time as Robin Hood.

Who was a fantastic swordsman – and a cook.

2 thoughts on “Mr. Know-it-all

  1. Let me tell you what would be a real treat:
    A gathering of Know-It-Alls together at a meet
    And with Know-It-Alls as far as you can see
    Just think what the potential might come to be

    Id’ like to be there as a fly on the wall
    To see the mayhem, bedlam, confusion and all
    I can imagine them searching for a modest few
    For anyone who’s listen, to be repulsive to

    It would be fun, but for them a great test
    To find out just who is the biggest darn pest
    And how long should such a meeting last?
    Until all realized they are a pain-in-the-a_s

    Perhaps at meeting’s end some few would see
    How totally obnoxious a Know-It-All can be

    P.S. No, I didn’t write this but have always remembered it.

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